28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

From the Word of the Day

Naaman said: “If you will not accept, please let me, your servant, have two mule-loads of earth,* for your servant will no longer make burnt offerings or sacrifices to any other god except the LORD. (2 Kings 5: 17)

How should we live this Word

Questioning God’s existence is a leitmotiv that recurs throughout the ages of humanity. Every generation seeks to have a new answer to this question, one that is original and different from the certainties of the past. An event in our life causes us to experience with certainty that there is Someone who exists and who is God. It may the birth of a child or a successful endeavor or the death of a dear person. Beyond the emotions and feelings that these arouse, our intelligence leads us to perceive that the event is not casual and there is Someone to thank for the gift.

In today’s reading, we have Naaman, an important person, knocking on the door of the King asking for a miracle. The King feels provoked and thinks Naaman is looking for war. Instead, Naaman is sick and seeks a cure. The King sends him to Eliseus, the prophet, for whom that sickness is the opportunity for a new revelation. He tells Naaman to perform a very simple rite to which Naaman rebels but then does perform and is cured, and deems the miracle a gift given to him and to his people; a gift given by the Author of Life. This event cancels out in him every other religious belief. Now he knows that God exists and is the only true God to whom he will turn from now on.

Lord, grant me to be become capable of seeing You in all the events of my life. Help me to discern Your will that I may meet You face to face.

The voice of Marco Tibaldi, Theologian

The great task of Naaman was to abandon his own ideas, his own image of God and of his healing, to embrace this unimagined identity of God…’Now I know there is no other god, except the Lord.